2013's biggest men's style accessory has finally jumped the shark. It's time
to consign the trendy beard to the barber-shop floor of history, writes Tom
Sykes

“What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays,” begins one of the greatest kids' books of all time, Roald Dahl’s The Twits.

What Dahl, who once said he was moved to write the book because he wanted to “do something against beards”, would have made of today’s most worn-out male fashion trend, one can only imagine.

I mean, a joke’s a joke. But it’s time to face facts, fellas.

It’s time to shave.

You can argue forever about when the great beard revival of 2013 began (some would argue the trend has been bubbling along since 2011 or 2012), but there is little doubt about the moment when the beard finally jumped the shark; it was the "Paxman moment".

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Since that evening in August when Jeremy, freshly back from his hollers, peered out of our screens with all the gravitas of Albert Steptoe, nothing has been quite the same in beard-land.

Indeed, there is increasing evidence that in the new-beard’s spiritual heartland, London’s East End, pognophobia is the fastest growing new trend. Fashionable gay men in particular, are totally done with beards, and have been sporting a cleaner cut look post-Paxman. Straight men are now starting to follow suit in their droves. Debenhams announced this week that its sales of grooming gadgets such as electric shavers had soared 24%, as the clean-shaven look returns.

Thank god, say I – although I have some sympathy for the true casualties of peak-beard; real beard people who have seen themselves accused of being band-wagon-hopping trendies.

Take, for example, my friend, the photographer Tom Craig. He first grew a beard over seven years ago – a move he attributes to simple male curiosity as to what would happen if he stopped shaving for a bit – and decided to keep it after he went on a trip to the arctic.

“After a few days of -35 degrees, you only think about the basics; chocolate, lipids and potential gaps in your armoury,” he says. “Having a beard is the distillation of that. It’s about a less complicated existence. But now the trendies have ruined my beard party. My beard is real, but I am surrounded by fake beards. So, the little face ferret has got to go.”

Bill Prince, the eternally clean-shaven deputy editor of GQ and Telegraph luxury columnist, agrees that it’s time for the self-respecting gentleman to wave bye-bye to beards. “Beards have gone from Grizzly Adams to generic, and the catwalks have absolutely rinsed it over the last four seasons. It’s time to shed the beard now. We are wading through the green shoots of recovery, and beards are about a grungier feel. Hunkering down is no longer the prevailing mood.”

Prince said that no more than four of 19 men in his eye line at the GQ office as we were speaking on the phone were bearded. Pre-Paxman, I would wager it was double that.

Of course, it is the inevitable perversity of fashion that just as style leaders are ditching a trend, the sheep-like masses are embracing it. So although Shoreditch and Homerton may soon be largely cleared of beards, facial hair, like escaped rhododendron, is now too well established in the general population to be wiped out in anything less than a decade, which explains that spinning noise you can hear.